These days it’s hard to maintain privacy on the Net. Surf sites and cookies identify your usage habits. Download some porn, and your IP is stored on servers. Send email and copies are bounced (and left) on different servers. Short of simply giving up the web altogether, there’s a cool way to maintain your web invisibility. That’s with Tor.

Tor is a tool deploying encrypted tunnels which anonymizes web browsing, instant messengers (IM), IRC, and most applications that use the TCP protocol. It draws power from volunteers who run servers.

Tor arose to protect you from of Internet surveillance affectionately dubbed “traffic analysis”. But there’s more. Tor also empowers the surfer to reach websites or services that are blocked by your local ISP or even by heavy-handed authorities(like in China).

Tor is open source software. That means its free so anyone can use it without donations and fees. Be aware of the ramifactions of criminal use, however. People have been caught using Tor for terrorism and drug peddling.

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